


Calm Before the Storm

by Sapphic_Futurist



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Dark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Delayed Drowning, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:54:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26993233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sapphic_Futurist/pseuds/Sapphic_Futurist
Summary: “Suit integrity, 67%.”“Tony! We’re not going to make it!”Steve’s voice was almost lost over the howling of the wind as the Iron Man suit stuttered and faltered in the sky, a hesitant rocket barreling towards a shoreline lost somewhere on the murky horizon.“Hold on!”
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 20
Kudos: 48
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Calm Before the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> Although I'm not participating in Whumptober this year, today's prompt had the plot bunnies hopping and I couldn't help myself. 
> 
> Let me be incredibly clear: yes, this is whump, yes, the tags are important so please mind them, yes, I have some issues don't @ me. 
> 
> Thanks to [ralsbecket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ralsbecket/profile) for the beta and the lovely concrit. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> For: No. 13 - Breathe In, Breathe Out  
> Prompt: Delayed Drowning

“Suit integrity, 67%.”

“Tony! We’re not going to make it!”

Steve’s voice was almost lost over the howling of the wind as the Iron Man suit stuttered and faltered in the sky, a hesitant rocket barreling towards a shoreline lost somewhere on the murky horizon.

“Hold on!”

Tony shouted urgent orders to JARVIS to conserve power: reduce weapons capacities, cut all but emergency communication, anything to focus enough power on the thrusters to get them to land. Steve might be fine. His near bottomless energy reserves could be enough to help him swim towards the coast, but even with the emergency releases, the water was too frigid for Tony. 

By the time Steve could get them both to safety, Tony would freeze to death. If he stayed in the suit, he would sink, heavy as a stone, straight to the bottom. Even Steve couldn’t bear the weight of the near five hundred pounds of gold-titanium alloy and Tony along with his own, and the churning sea of ink below them.

“Tony, you have to—”

“Don’t fucking say it! Don’t you fucking say it, Steve.” Blood roared in his ears, and adrenaline raced through his body like he was mainlining amphetamines, every nerve ending alive with panic and fear. Steve would tell him to let him go. Tony would _never_. “There’s another way. Goddamnit, JARVIS, where are we on that SOS?”

“Another eight minutes out, Sir.”

“It’s not enough. The suit—We’ve got a better chance if you—”

“ _Fuck you_ , Rogers. Fuck you. Don’t you dare.”

Below them, the water crashed in high swells, ravaging over each other as they reached up to greet the storm rolling in from the east. The once blue waves churned like the nausea in Tony’s stomach, where Death called like a siren and Steve was racing headlong into a decision to steer their ship towards her wreckage.

“You need to get lower.”

“No!”

“Tony please, please, I’m begging you—”

“I said _no_ , damnit.”

And then Steve went silent. 

It was the kind of silence that came over him when his mind was made up. When every piece of the puzzle had fallen into place and the master tactician had settled on a final outcome. Why had no one ever told Steve that the endgame didn’t need to result in self-sacrifice?

With the limited view remaining through the HUD, Tony glanced down at the grip he had on Steve’s arm and both of Steve’s hands where they were wrapped around the curve of Tony’s elbow. The wind buffeted against him, cowl lost minutes before in the gale, as the rain soaked through his hair, a dark, drenched blonde plastered on his pale face. 

Even now, he was beautiful. The most beautiful thing Tony had ever seen.

“Let me go,” Steve said, voice soft and comforting. Steve smiled, all white teeth and adoring eyes despite the rain striking across his skin. It must’ve been a thousand tiny shards of glass, but Steve didn’t wince, just kept his eyes locked with Tony’s and breathed.

“No, Steve I can’t, please. Steve!”

“It’s okay. Tony, it’s okay. I love you. I’ve loved you since the beginning, you know that. It’s okay. I promise.”

Tony choked, gagging on Steve’s words. What was he saying? Tony couldn’t think, couldn’t fathom it.

Without warning, Steve dropped his grip on Tony’s arm and the suit banked to the right, plummeting a few hundred feet towards the frigid water before JARVIS leveled out him, thrusters flickering with the strain.

“Steve!”

Tony held Steve’s wrist in a tight grip with the gauntlet, the other hand stretched out behind him, keeping them alight and he had nothing to fight Steve off with, nothing he could use to stop him. He could only watch, with abject horror, when Steve reached up and squeezed the fingers of the gauntlet with his own, looking into the Iron Man faceplate with a bittersweet smile.

A smile that was saying goodbye.

Then Steve pulled the fingers away, grunting from the force of it as he pried open Tony’s fingers and sending off a series of internal alarms. The metal shrieked and gave way, cracks spreading up the arm of the suit and the repulsor in Tony’s palm sparking out. Spiderwebs cracked up the metal like shattered glass, as if the suit was a delicate thing against the brute strength of Captain America.

“Sir, suit integrity 55%. Even with all additional power redirected to the thrusters, the chances of survival at this rate are—”

“Shut up! Shut up JARVIS. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Steve!” And then Steve was falling, limbs limp trailing behind the rest of his body as the water reached up to welcome him to its depths. “No!”

Tony veered back, suit arcing through the storm as the black sky bled into the water and Tony couldn’t see where the sea ended, save for the white frothing peaks of the waves cresting in the chaos.

Steve hit the water before Tony could reach him, disappearing into the dark and sinking fast.

As Tony broke through the surface, the suit collided with the wall of water and then there was nothing. No sound, the faint glow of lightening fading behind him, and Steve, eyes closed with a stream of unsettling bubbles rushing up towards the Iron Man suit in an underwater cloud. He dropped, heavy as a stone, unconscious.

The light from the chest plate was an eerie glow, following Steve’s body down like a homing beacon and Tony prayed he would reach him in time. 

“JARVIS?”

“Suit integrity, 49%, Sir. The likelihood of you making it back to the surface with the Captain is only 15%. I have to advise you to turn back.”

“I can’t,” Tony gasped, “I won’t. Just make it happen, damn it.”

The thrusters kicked in and sent him jetting down, down, down, until the pressure of the deep had the suit shrieking and whining under the strain. He was so close, so close, he could almost reach out and—

Tony wrapped his hand around Steve’s wrist and felt the suit squeal under the weight, dragging them both down. Water was spilling in through the cracks in the arm and ice speared through his extremities. 

Was this how Steve had felt, all those years ago, when he’d put the Valkyrie in the water? Steve hadn’t panicked, Tony had heard the tape. Steve had just promised Peggy a dance, voice calm and even, apologetic even at the end, and been a strength for her through it all.

“I’m not making you any stupid promises now, Rogers. You goddamn martyr. If we make it out of this, I’m going to drop you off a goddamn cliff myself. Or chain you to the bed for the rest of your natural life. You _idiot_.” 

Those were sort of like promises, Tony supposed.

“Get us to the surface, J. As fast as you can.”

“Suit integrity 38%.” Water was gushing into the armour now, bogging them down and slowing the ascent to the surface. The sensation in Tony’s fingers was fading fast and he could feel the thrusters in the boots struggling under their combined weight along with the pressure of the water surrounding them.

“JARVIS, come on!”

“Sir the risk of decompression sickness—”

“If you don’t get us up, we’ll both drown, JARVIS, you think I give a fuck about decompression sickness? Just get us to the surface and send out another SOS. Tell them where we are. I can get him there. I can do this, damn it.” Tony gritted his teeth, almost biting through the side of his cheek.

The surface wasn’t within view as the water crept steadily up towards his chest, filling in every modicum of space and reaching up to lick at his throat. It was a race against time and after his run-in with Vanko in France, Tony had never been one for races. 

In moments, he’d be underwater. The Avalon Protocol might be enough to get Steve to safety either way, but if he could just hold out a few moments longer—

“Ninety seconds to the surface,” JARVIS advised, and a flicker of the SOS appeared across the HUD before it disappeared. Even the alarms had stopped blaring. “Suit integrity, 23%.”

Ninety seconds wasn’t enough. The water rushed into Tony’s mouth, filling his nose and sliding into his chest like icicles driving through his lungs. Tony choked, gasped for air and found none. He held what he could in his chest before his vision went blurry and he couldn’t think, couldn’t breath. Had to breathe. Taking on more water. 

He was going to drown. He _was_ drowning and they weren’t going to make it.

 _I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry Steve_.

Just as streaks blurred across his vision and his sight narrowed into a tunnel that threatened to close, the suit breached the surface, rocketing into the air and flashing across the sky. Water drained from the suit as JARVIS activated the emergency released and Tony gulped in air, sputtering and gagging around the salty water as he vomited into the inside of the suit.

He refused to let go of Steve’s hand.

In the distance he could see it—the ship. He’d done it! They’d made it. They were going to be alright. They were going to live!

“Brace for impact, Sir!” JARVIS called through the ringing in his ears. Everything was numb. The world was spinning. Steve was unconscious, hanging from his grip, slack and still enough to be lifeless. 

The suit failed as they reached the edge of the ship, sending Tony and Steve sprawling across the deck, shattering through boxes of cargo and slamming into the side of the vessel. Before he could issue another order, the suit released and Tony was scrambling out between desperate breaths, prying away what he could with numb fingers.

A few feet away, Steve wasn’t breathing. _Steve wasn’t breathing_.

“Help him!” Tony screamed into the storm, the S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives rushing towards them. Natasha’s shock of red hair came into view, shoving through the pandemonium. She was on them in a second, fingers at Steve’s throat to feel for his pulse. Then the heels of her hands were pounding on his chest in a quick, steady rhythm and she breathed for him. 

Over and over, Natasha tried to force the life back into Steve’s body as Tony retched again, bringing up more seawater onto the harsh wood of the deck.

 _I’ve lost him. All that and I’ve lost him anyway_.

“Natasha, please,” Tony rasped, crawling towards them, hand outstretched. She smacked him away and then someone else was there, an agent Tony didn’t recognize, pulling him back. Pulling him away. Away from _Steve_.

“Let me go! Damn it, let me go!” He fought, thrashed against the grip that held him fast with as much strength as a day-old kitten, prepared to bite his way free if he had to. 

And then something happened.

Steve _breathed_.

He sputtered and choked but he was breathing. Breathing!

Blue eyes opened and met his and everything was going to be alright. The burning in Tony’s chest, the frozen tips of flesh that were once his fingers and toes, the scrambled spinning in his mind, none of it mattered because Steve was looking at him.

Tony choked on a sob, freed from the hands holding him back to collapse half on top of Steve, smothering him with his weight even as Steve tried to prop himself up. Steve gasped for air and brought up water of his own. Salt and bile speared across them both as Steve heaved up his share of the ocean but one of his arms was looped around Tony’s waist and it was enough.

“I love you. You fucking bastard, you didn’t even give me a chance to say it back.”

“T-Tony?”

“I love you. Jesus Christ, I love you so much and I’m going to kill you. Tomorrow. After you warm me up and feed me soup. Or maybe I’ll warm you up. Either way, tomorrow, I’m going to kill you.” Every word was a knife in his raw throat but Tony couldn’t stop, the whispered words of _I love you_ tumbling from his lips in a steady stream. A benediction he would say every day for the rest of his life.

Steve laughed, finally able to tug Tony into his body, and held him close.

They’d made it.

****

Sometime late in the night, Steve woke up cold again.

When they’d finally fallen asleep, wrapped in each other’s arms, buried under a mountain of S.H.I.E.L.D. regulation-issue blankets, he had been warmer than he’d been in his entire life. Warmer than when he’d woken up after the Arctic. Warmer than the time Tony had made love to him for hours in front of a roaring fire at that safehouse in Albuquerque; the day they’d finally come to their senses and fallen into each other’s arms, hands frantic over warm skin. 

Steve shivered and tucked the blankets further up under his chin.

Everything that came after he’d let go of Tony’s hand in the sky was a blur, nothing more than a series of flashes pieced together against the backdrop of the night sky. A streak of red and gold chasing him down, his back searing with pain as he hit the water. The familiar fear of being trapped under the ice as water flooded into his lungs once more.

Sinking.

And then Natasha, breathing air into his lungs and Tony thrown across his chest, a welcomed weight even as his body screamed for relief. Somehow, they’d both managed to make it out unscathed, half-frozen and half-drowned perhaps, but uninjured. Already on the way to recovery.

“I’m fine,” Tony had said, pushing Natasha away as she tried to tend to him next. There was no medic on board the ship, and it was nothing short of a miracle that Steve could hold Tony in his arms, overcome with panic as Tony shivered through massive tremors. 

In a way, Steve had never felt more alive. 

“Come on, sailor, let’s find a bunk and you can take your time warming me up,” Tony teased, his shaky voice a far cry from his usual lecherous humour as he dug his elbow into Steve’s side. It startled a laugh out of Steve all the same.

Even with his face drawn tense around his eyes and mouth, Tony found a way to put him at ease. 

They tucked away into a small room, nothing more than a double wide cot, two pillows and a towering pile of wool blankets and Steve had helped Tony strip down from his flight suit. His beautiful, graceful hands where so white they were almost blue and Steve shoved them into the warm crevice between their bodies to hold him, creating a makeshift sauna of mutual body heat.

Then Tony had stopped laughing.

“You let go,” he said, face grim. The accusation was laced with betrayal and hurt.

“Tony—”

“No, shut up,” Tony snapped despite the chattering of his teeth. “You let go. You made me _let you go_. You don’t get to make that call. Never again, understand? We don’t do this. You don’t ever do that, and so help me Thor, if you do it ever again, I’ll fucking kill you. I’ll bring you back to life just to kill you myself.”

Steve leaned in closer, pressing his forehead against Tony’s, letting the angry puffs of breath wash over his face. “I had to, Tony. I couldn’t drag you down with me. You had the better chance.”

“We stick together,” Tony said, fierce rage burning bright behind the brown-black mixture of his eyes. “We stick together, _always._ ”

“If I’d been the reason you died, I could never—”

Tony cut him off again, eyes flashing. “Never again. You hear me? Promise me.”

Steve drew a rattling breath and clenched Tony tighter against his chest. “I promise. I love you, I’m sorry. I love you so much.”

Tony was silent for a long moment, so long Steve had almost slipped into sleep. Then he felt desperate, chilled lips against his own. He kissed Tony back, forcing every grain of love he had for him into the motion and when Tony broke away, he was breathing hard.

“Not that you have a choice in the matter,” Tony said, “but when we get home, we’re getting married. I’m not letting you go, not after this. I mean it, Steve. The second we set foot on solid land. Married. Forever. No exceptions.”

The look Tony gave him dared him to protest but Steve wasn’t a fool.

“Not that it matters,” he said slowly, teasing, “but nothing would make me happier.”

Tony nodded, a sharp jerk of his head at the sufficient response, before he buried closer, snuggling into Steve’s chest and wrapping the blankets tighter around them both.

Married. _Married_.

Steve drifted into sleep with Tony’s hair tickling his jaw and the welcoming heat of his body wrapping around them both. That night, he dreamed of dancing and Tony’s hand on his nape, pulling him down to press their mouths together, the night sky clear and illuminated by the white of the moon and stars. 

There was no water, no crashing waves. Just Tony’s arms wrapped around him.

Steve sniffled, coughing around the sear in his chest and nudged closer to Tony, searching through the pile of blankets for his warm to see if he might find a few more hours of rest. He reached over to sling an arm around Tony’s waist and draw him in, to press his face into the side of Tony’s throat where he might still smell of spice and expensive cologne. 

Except when Steve touched him, Tony was cold.

Tony was cold?

Tony was cold and he wasn’t moving.

Time stopped. Steve fumbled a hand onto Tony’s pulse point, eyes roving over skin that was too ghastly pale to mean anything except—

The moments between his scream for help and the doctor trying to take Tony away were a blur; nothing more than snippets of Natasha’s arms wrapping around him, holding him, restraining him maybe.

Steve caught a flash of white sheets and a gurney. The words _delayed drowning_ and _aspiration_ and _laryngospasm_ knocking against his skull but refusing to process. 

“Where are they taking him! Please don’t take him!” Steve tried to push past Natasha but she held her ground, bracing herself against his weight. He could have shoved her to the floor if he’d wanted to, dressed in nothing more than a pair of borrowed sweatpants with a blanket still draped over his shoulders but she whispered quiet words in a broken voice and all the fight bled away.

The white, sheet-covered mass that was Tony disappeared from view and in that moment, Steve thought to ask if they’d take him too, because they belonged together. Hadn’t Tony just promised him they’d be together, always? Steve had to go too.

Where were they taking him?

A chill rushed through him and just for a moment, his mind whispered a hateful tale.

They’d buried men at sea for hundreds of years, hadn’t they? Stitched them up in white, said a rushed prayer and dumped their bodies into the sea for all eternity. During the war it had been a necessity. No casket, no flag, just a corpse and the endless rocking of the water for a man’s final rest.

Surely, they wouldn’t, couldn’t—

He gagged, keeled over and blindly grabbed for the edge of the bed or a railing on the wall. Anything.

“Natasha,” Steve gasped when he could bear it, curling his fists around nothing and fighting to see her through a fresh curtain of tears that swam before his eyes. “Natasha, please don’t let them take him.”

“Steve,” she whispered, helplessly. “Come here.”

“He asked me to marry him. We’re—we’re getting married.”

Natasha made a soft, broken sound but said nothing, just pulled him back into her arms and held him for as long as she could. Even when his knees gave way and he fell to the ground, she went with him, holding him as he collapsed and sobbed Tony’s name over and over again against her shoulder.

It felt like it might never stop, the begging, pleading. Sobbing.

_We were getting married. Please don’t, we’re getting married._

On the deck, the storm raged on and the sea continued its assault against the horizon. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come hangout with me on [Tumblr](https://sapphic-futurist.tumblr.com/) or Discord!
> 
> If you're a fan of the dark, the deranged or the angsty, come visit with us in the [SteveTony Darkfests Server](https://discord.com/invite/X9xaRPT) and check out the Stony Sad Secret Santa exchange! 
> 
> Your comments and kudos are always loved.


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